Terminology: Marine

The term, MARINE refers to both the soldiers and military organizations whose primary function is one or more of the following:

* Close assault and boarding of space-faring vessels

* Defense of space-faring vessels against close assault and boarding

* Assault from space against the defended surface of a planet

The term is widely used to describe the relevant military forces of most political entities within the Trans-Species Union.

The original Earthly military meaning of marine (water-borne rather than space-borne military forces) is now referred to as ‘littoral marine’ or ‘seaborne marine’. Referring to a member of such a unit as a ‘wet marine’ is a sure way to start a fight. The term Space Marine is never used.

The military term ‘marine’ is not capitalized in general use, although marine organizations will frequently capitalize when referring to themselves. Since the accounts you are now reading are about the Human Legion, and its predecessor/ rival, the Human Marine Corps, we capitalize as ‘Marine’ when referring to those organizations. We, the authors, are ourselves Marines. Whatever the grammatical niceties of proper nouns might demand, it is impossible for us to think of ourselves as anything other than Marines with an upper case ‘M’. To call us marines would be an insult.

And, we would argue, an insult to our ancestors, for we were not the first Marines by a long way.

Seaborne marines were critical in ancient Earth history. In the Battle of Salamis (-480CE) Greek marines played a crucial role in defeating the much larger Persian forces, helping to set the cultural underpinning of what would later be called Western Civilization.

A ship-boarding technology called the corvus enabled Roman marines to win naval supremacy in the Mediterranean Sea (around -250CE), ultimately meaning the Romans defeated their arch rivals the Carthaginians to become the dominant regional superpower for many centuries.

The next major innovation in seaborne marine forces came two thousand years later with the development of a much larger self-contained, combined-arms marine army that could fight wars almost unaided. This was the United States Marine Corps.

It is widely speculated by modern-era Marines that the military units formed from human slaves following the Vancouver Accord were inspired by the US Marine Corps. Others regard this as wishful thinking, pointing out that while the Human Marine Corps might draw inspiration from the fighting spirit of their US ancestors, the segregation and racism inherent to their command structure more closely follows the army of the British East India Company in the early 1800s CE.

Whatever the truth of that argument, we the Marines of the Human Legion acknowledge the rich heritage of our Earthly military ancestors, and indeed those from other planets. We recognize their example and transcend them, because the Human Legion is not based in the past. We have a single mission: to fight for a better future. A future for us all.

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